The invention relates to file access over a network and in particular to transparent routing of client requests for files and/or other resources that reside on a plurality of servers.
Larger corporations and other organizations may want to store records, files and other resources across several servers servicing their needs. It becomes desirable in such situations to group several servers together so that they appear to a client as a single, logical unit. Ideally, such a single logical unit would have no duplication of data objects contained therein. Furthermore, the single logical unit should have as little overhead as possible in servicing any given resource request that arrives at a server belonging to the distributed logical unit. In many situations, the requested resource object may not reside at the same server that originally receives the resource request, so that some form of forwarding, routing, or acquisition of the desired resource must occur in order to service that original resource request.
Multi-server environments are known wherein a client wishing to access specific information or a specific file is redirected to a server that has the piece of the requested information or file. The client then establishes a new connection to the other server upon redirect and severs the connection to the originally contacted server. However, this approach defeats the benefit of maintaining a long-lived connection between the client and the initial server.
Another approach is “storage virtualization” where an intermediary device is placed between the client and the servers, with the intermediary device providing the request routing. None of the servers is hereby aware that it is providing only a portion of the entire partitioned service. Adding the intermediary device adds complexity to the system.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a method and system that allows a client to contact any server in a multi-server environment and to access resources, such as files, distributed across the multi-server environment while maintaining a connection only to the contacted server.